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Intel jobs page tips GPU plans

In a recent update to their careers page, Intel has pulled back the curtain a …

In a recent update to their careers page, Intel has pulled back the curtain a little bit more on what is probably one of the worst kept secrets in the tech industry right now: their plans to build a GPU to compete with NVIDIA and AMD/ATI. The blurb for Intel's Visual Computing Group goes as follows:

Intel's Visual Computing Group (VCG) has the mission to establish the future of computing for high-throughput workloads. We are focused on developing discrete graphics products based on a many-core architecture targeting high-end client platforms. Our vision is that the resulting ingredients and technology will extend to mobile clients, servers, and embedded platforms over time. VCG will initially focus on discrete graphics products but will also expand the previous charter to include developing plans for accelerated CPU integration.

There's not a lot to add, because that pretty much sums it all up. Intel intends to make discrete (i.e., non-integrated, like their GMA line) GPUs for everything from workstations down to cell phones.

Of course, nobody at NVIDIA or AMD/ATI is really going to fling themselves out of a 20th-floor window in despair upon reading this posting, because this particular cat has been at least halfway out of the bag for quite some time. It has always just been a matter of waiting for the formal announcement. Judging by this careers page, I'd expect some kind of announcement this year.

I think the most interesting question that this posting raises is "What took Intel so long?"

Our ads may feature bunny suits, but we make serious chips for serious people

My own sense of why the world's top supplier of complex, high-performance integrated circuits left companies like NVIDIA, ATI, the erstwhile Voodoo, and others to carry us through the 3D graphics revolution on their own is that it has at least something to do with corporate culture.

One of my favorite Intel anecdotes from undergrad, which I think I've told on the site before, is about the time when some Intel engineers came to visit a class in order to talk about what the company does. They told us that they have a testing lab where they test processors for bugs, and this testing lab runs a very sophisticated benchmarking program that really pushes the CPU to the max. The program is also a piece of self-modifying code, which makes it especially useful for turning up bugs. The benchmark program, as it turns out, was Id software's Doom, and of course we all had a good laugh at the idea that Doom was being played in the hallowed halls of Intel. Intel didn't do games; they did business.

Fast forward to the Pentium III ad campaign, in which we were told that the Pentium III with SSE would "make your Internet faster." At this point, we all knew quite well that most of the people who were buying top-of-the-line PIII chips were doing so to run games. But still, one got the sense that Intel would rather go out of business than be seen as a supplier of silicon primarily intended for gaming and entertainment. It seemed that the company would go to any lengths to maintain their image as a maker of serious chips for serious people, regardless of what the general public was actually using all that CPU horsepower for.

Intel did give discrete graphics a very lackluster try with the i740, but it was clear that their heart wasn't in it. The i740, which was based on acquired technology, was utterly mediocre, and analysts were mystified that an engineering powerhouse like Intel could let itself be so thoroughly upstaged by much smaller players. Intel obviously had their priorities set, and gaming chips were not among them.

Today's Intel, with its homepage that's strangely reminiscent of Apple's (down to the dancing people with earbuds), may seem so focused on consumer technologies that it's hard to imagine a time when the company wouldn't touch gaming with a ten-foot pole. But that stuffy, business-only image is Intel's past, and the company now realizes that its future definitely encompasses the realm of computer-based entertainment. Intel coveted the Apple contract precisely because of products like the AppleTV, and soon the company will make its first serious foray into full-blown 3D gaming.

Unlike the general-purpose CPU, real-time 3D graphics on a PC is a technology that Intel did not either invent or popularize, but the company is not a total outsider to this realm. In fact, if you were to gauge success strictly in terms of sales volume, Intel is the world's top supplier of 3D graphics accelerators, in the form of its integrated graphics products.

I expect that the pattern that Intel may follow with discrete graphics could be similar to the pattern that it followed with integrated graphics. The first post-740 discrete graphics product may not be the king of the benchmark hill, but like the 740 it will be cheap and very widely available. Intel has always been a process-driven company, and they can use their fab muscle to make up for any initial performance problems by keeping prices low. Eventually, they'll get the design right, too, and at that point they're going to be a very tough competitor in the price/performance game.